Nehemiah 13
Amen. Turn to your copy of God’s
word to Nehemiah chapter 12 tonight and then next week will be the
end of our series in Ezra, Haggai and Nehemiah. And then I believe
we might head to Judges. So we’ve done Genesis and Exodus
on Wednesday nights, probably do Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy
down the line. A year ago, we did Joshua in
here. So I think Judges is where we’ll go next. So if you come
to all the teaching events, you’ll catch the whole Bible in some
way, shape, or form. But tonight we want to think
of the dedication of the wall. And we’ve got one more list of
names to read that begins in chapter 12, verse one, but the
bulk of this is about the dedication of the wall. So let’s give our
attention now to God’s word. These are the priest and the
Levites who came up with Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua,
Sariah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Amariah, Malak, Hattush, Shekiniah, Rahim,
Merimoth, Iddo, Gennathoi, Abijah, Midgerman, Madiah, Bilga, Shemiah,
Joyerib, Jediah, Salah, Ammok, Hilkiah, Jediah. These were the
chiefs of the priest and their brothers in the days of Jeshua.
And the Levites, Jeshua, Benuni, Cadmeo, Sherebiah, Judah, and
Mattaniah, who with his brothers was in charge of the songs of
Thanksgiving. and Bacchubiah and Uni and their
brothers stood opposite them in the service. And Jeshua was
the father of Joachim, Joachim the father of Eliashib, Eliashib
the father of Joedah. Joedah was the father of Jonathan,
and Jonathan was the father of Jadwa. And in the days of Joachim
were priests, heads of fathers’ houses of Sariah, Moriah, Jeremiah,
of Hananiah, of Ezra, Meshulam, of Amariah Jehonahan, of Maluchi
Jonathan, of Shebaniah Joseph, of Harim Adna and Miriath, of
Helki, of Iddo Zechariah, and of Ginnathan. Meshulam of Abijah
Zichri, of Meniamin, of Modiah, of Piltai, of Bilgah Shamuah,
of Shemaiah, Jehonathan, of Joirib, Matanai, of Jediah, Uzzi, of
Salai, Kalai, of Amok, Eber, and of Hilkiah, Hashbiah, and
of Jediah, Nethanel. In the days of Eliashib, Joieta,
Johanan, and Jadua, the Levites were recorded as heads of fathers’
houses, so too were the priests in the reign of Darius the Persian.
As for the sons of Levi, their heads of father’s houses were
written in the book of the Chronicles, until the days of Johanan, the
son of Eliashub, and the chiefs, the Levites, Hashebiah, Sherebiah,
and Jeshua, the son of Cadmeo, with their brothers, who stood
opposite them to praise and to give thanks according to the
commandments of David, the man of God. Watch by watch, Mataniah,
Bacchubiah, Obadiah, Mishalom, Talmon, and Aqab were gatekeepers
standing at the storehouses of the gates. These were in the
days of Joachim, the son of Jeshua, the son of Josedach, in the days
of Nehemiah, the governor, and of Ezra, the priest and the scribe.
At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, they sought the
Levites in all their places to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate
the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings and with singings
and with cymbals, harps and lyres. And the sons of the singers gathered
together from the district surrounding Jerusalem and from the villages
of the Natophathites. Also from Beth-Gilgal and from
the region of Geba and of Asmabeth. For the singers had built for
themselves villages around Jerusalem. And the priest and the Levites
purified themselves and they purified the people and the gates
and the wall. Then I brought the leaders of
Judah up onto the wall and appointed two great choirs and gave thanks.
One went to the south and on the wall to the dungate. And
after them went Hoshiah and half of the leaders of Judah and of
Azariah, Ezra, Mishulam, Judah, Benjamin, Shemiah, and Jeremiah,
and certain of the priests, sons with trumpets. Zechariah, the
son of Jonathan, the son of Shemiah, the son of Mattaniah, the son
of Micaiah, the son of Zachar, the son of Asaph and his relatives,
Shemaiah, Azrael, Milali, Gilali, Mai, Nethanel, Judah, and Hanani,
with the musical instruments of David, the man of God. And
Ezra, the scribe, went before them. At the fountain gate, they
went up straight before them by the stairs of the city of
David. the ascent of the wall above the house of David to the
water gate on his on the east. The other choir of those who
gave thanks went to the north and I followed them with half
of the people on the wall above the tower of the ovens to the
broad wall and above the gate of Ephraim and by the gate of
Yeshina and by the fish gate and the tower of Hananel and
the tower of the hundred to the sheep gate. And they came to
a halt at the gate of the guard, so both the choirs of those who
gave thanks stood in the house of God. And I and half the officials
with me and the priest, Eliakim, Messiah, Menahem, Micaiah, Eloanai,
Zechariah, Hananiah, with trumpets, and Messiah, Shemaiah, Eleazar,
Uzzi, Jehonahan, Malkijah, Elam, and Ezer. And the singers sang
with Jezariah as their leader, and they offered Great sacrifices
that day and rejoiced for God had made them rejoice with great
joy and the women and children also rejoiced and the joy of
Jerusalem was heard far away. On that day, men were appointed
over the storerooms, the contributions, the first fruits and the tithes
to gather into them the portions required by the law for the priest,
for the Levites. according to the fields of the
towns for Judah rejoiced over the priest and the Levites who
ministered and they performed the service of their God and
the service of purification as did the singers and the gatekeepers
according to the command of David and his son Solomon. For long
ago in the days of David and Asaph, there were directors of
the singers and there were songs of praise and there was thanksgiving
to God and all Israel in the days of Zerubbabel And in the
days of Nehemiah gave the daily portions for the singers and
the gatekeepers. And they set apart that which
was for the Levites. And the Levites set apart that
which was for the sons of Aaron.” This is the word of the living
God. Our confession of faith says
that sometimes the church is more or less visible. It says that the church is sometimes
more or less pure. And it says that the church is
sometimes more or less large in size or small in size. The church, more or less visible
on earth because of what we profess, whether it’s the true gospel
or no gospel at all, or some mixture of an adulterated gospel. Maybe fewer people profess faith. Maybe in some eras, more people
profess faith. Sometimes there’s eras with more
children or less children, more generations, less generations.
Sometimes the church is more pure, less pure. Sometimes the
church embraces right doctrine, and other times it does not. And I think one of the, maybe
the key markers Sometimes the ordinances, the true and proper
ordinances of the church, the preaching of the word, the sacraments,
prayer, fellowship, those things are sometimes more or less visible
or purely or impurely done. And it says even good churches
are mixed with error. And so those things that our
confession points out and teaches remind us especially in a world
that promotes metrics, nickels and noses as a key marker of
the health of a church. I get asked all the time, how
big is your church? Well, it’s big enough. How many people are
in your church? Well, the ones God sent. And
those are, I think, the right answers because The spirit moves
and people come. And when you want to be a church
that has right doctrine, right worship, right gospel, all the
things we hear and teach and profess, it’s not all that popular
in the world today. And I think we ought to be encouraged
because our confession of faith says rightly from the Bible that
there will always be a church on earth. It may be small. It may not seem much in the eyes
of the world, and it may not even seem much in the eyes of
other churches. I think we should take heed as
well. Some churches will degenerate.
In fact, our confession of faith says there will be no churches
at all but a synagogue of Satan. You’ve seen in the last year
in studying church history during Sunday school that Machen, J.
Gresham Machen, said there’s Christianity and there’s liberalism. He was kind, wasn’t he? Because
the scriptures say some have degenerated into a synagogue
of Satan. Well, Christianity has fallen
on hard times in our world. A friend of mine goes to one
good Bible conference every year, but he also goes to one weird
one, one that’s not from his tradition. And he went to one
recently for the big box type churches, you know what I mean? And I said, well, what was your
takeaway? And he said, you need three M’s
to succeed in church. You need moose, like hair moose,
You need a movie theater because of all the audio visual stuff.
And then you need metrics. And he says, this was their metrics.
This was their measurement. About every 30 to 60 to 90 days,
they would have a big, huge event in the life of their church.
And they believe if you market your church and you do these
big events every 30, 60, 90 days, your church will grow by 10%
in attenders every time you do one of these big events. And
it doesn’t matter who stays or who goes. Attendance just grows
by 10% every, say, a couple months. And the goal is to keep those
people in. Now, here’s what was really interesting
to me. And he said they should have
been ashamed to say this. When do they check up on a person
pastorally? It’s when their metrics show
the person has quit giving financially. How sad, because that’s their
main goal. You know, we say from time to
time, our goal is to get you safely to heaven. Now, we hope
you might put a little something in the offering plate. The treasurer
over here would require that we say that. And by the way,
you’re giving envelopes for 2024 over here. You can pick them
up if you haven’t already. But that’s a sad set of metrics,
isn’t it? And so where is the church today? Is it visible? Is it more pure
or less pure? Is it holding to the gospel or
not holding to the gospel? Is it preaching a bit of worldliness
with maybe some Jesus sprinkled on top? What is the state of
the church today? Well, We’re in all kinds of places,
I think. And thank the Lord that from
time to time, he shows us a snapshot in the scripture of a remnant
of God’s people who are excited about the basics. And I think
that’s what we have here in the book of Nehemiah. And it ought
to encourage us not to lose heart, not to despise the day of small
things, not to underestimate the seeds of the gospel. Not
to underestimate the roots that are under the ground that one
day will spring forth into something that will last into eternity
and into the future. Well, I know we read a handful
of names tonight and perhaps I butchered many of them, but
I probably, well, I shouldn’t say that. I was going to say,
I don’t know how to pronounce them, but I know how to pronounce
them better than you. So I got by with it, right? But those
are hard names to list. But these are real people in
real history who called on the name of the Lord, who chose to
leave the ease of Babylon and go back to the rubble of Jerusalem. Remember, they’ve been in exile
for all these years. And this is the tail end of the
return. This is the tail end of Ezra’s
ministry and Nehemiah’s ministry and all the other governors who
were with the people through this hundred plus years. You
remember, it’s only been, at least in the chronology of Nehemiah,
It’s only been a couple months since his midnight ride. You
know, we sing of the midnight ride of Paul Revere and, you
know, the light up in the belfry, two if by land and one if by
sea and all that. Well, remember the midnight ride
of Nehemiah, he checked the walls, he inspected the rubble and he
put together a plan which importantly included prayer. And so the temple
and the law and the wall has been reestablished. Worship has
begun again. And we think of all the hardship
they’ve been through. They had enemies. They had pagan
nations come at them. They even had their own moments
of lethargy where Haggai the prophet had to come to them and
say, why are you living in paneled houses? Why are you living in
a house that is finished and established? But my house, my
temple lies in ruins. And so remember all the hardships
that the people of God have endured, they now have a city, they now
have a temple, they have the wall and they have the wall. And so they want to celebrate
God’s goodness. God had been good to them. They
had encountered him and his faithfulness and it was fitting now to respond. It was fitting to celebrate,
to dedicate. to purify, to give thanks, and
then to continue to perform the good work of God’s temple. I want us to think of a couple
categories of thought tonight. The first would be dedication.
They want to dedicate the city of God. They want to dedicate
this city. They want to use it. They want
to fill it. They want to live for the glory of God. Their hearts
and their minds are full of all the goodness of God that he has
done for them in returning them and in rebuilding. Sometimes
we say after a stretch of ministry, it’s a good tired. Have you heard
that phrase before? It’s a good tired. Maybe in a
couple weeks, you’ll have a Thanksgiving meal at your house, and you’ll
finally put up all the dishes. You got suckered into getting
the china out. You got suckered into getting out the silver.
You got suckered into cooking a real turkey, not getting the
Cracker Barrel thing. You just did it all, and you
finally sit down. But it’s a good tired, isn’t
it? Family and friends and thankfulness. to God for all that is provided.
And it’s that way after ministry. I go home on Sunday nights. Actually,
I usually go out after everybody leaves and I plop in my car and
I sit there for a minute and I just say, whew, got through
the day. But it’s a good tired. God has been good to, to, to
meet with his people. Well, they’re at a good tired. The reproach has ended. This
wall is built. The gates have been put in place.
The city is protected. And now the city of God can erupt
with the praise of God for his goodness. This hasn’t really
happened in dramatic form since the days of Solomon and all the
nations looked in. The people of God had been down
and out for a while, not just with rebuilding the rubble, not
just with living in exile, but they’ve lived under centuries
of wicked kings. where worship was not held, Passover
was not held, the rights of their religion were not observed. And
you could say, as we mentioned early on from the confession
of faith, the church was less visible. It was less pure. In fact, it had almost all but
disappeared on the face of the earth, but we know God always
keeps a remnant. And so now these down and out
people are looking onwards and upwards, perhaps, Maybe in a
stretch of time when we fix up our sanctuary, we’ll have an
opening service. And we’ll be excited, won’t we?
We’ll come in and see the carpet that’s not 38 years old. We’ll
see pews that don’t hurt your tailbone when you sit on them.
Perhaps it’ll be fresh and the summer heat won’t come in here
and mildew our ceilings. And it’ll be very exciting. And
what happens when we have these first services? We try out the
building. You know, the sound system may
have some kinks. Is the piano placed right? Is
it serviceable for the things that we want to do for God in
here? Well, that’s exactly what’s going
on here when they dedicate the walls. This is their first service.
full on in the city. If you ever visit, uh, Jerusalem,
I suppose it’s not safe to do so now, but if you ever visit
there and you visit some of the old parts of the city walls,
it was almost like a little roadway on the top. And so as you picture,
uh, the, the Levites and Ezra and Nehemiah, some going South,
some going North, and then them meeting together at the house
of God, their processional was around the whole city on the
city walls. And God had been good to them.
This was their moment of pageantry. This was their moment to put
on their starched shirts and their Sunday best. You know,
we kind of do that at Easter, don’t we? I think we still do. We put on our Easter best. You
know, we get a Sunday dress, a Sunday tie or something for
Easter. Well, this was also all hands
on deck. The reason for saving the list
of Levites for this week and not including it with last week’s
section of the scripture is this could not be done. You could
not have city-wide worship without the priest and without the singers
and without all the people to pull off the pageantry. I love
simple church and simple worship, but from time to time I’ll go
to a church I’ll go to a church that has more people and more
stuff. Remember when I was a kid, uh,
I guess I was a college student. My dad took a call to a church
in Wilmington and you would go to one of, I think four services
on a Sunday morning and there would be 800 people in each service.
The singing was loud. You had to, you had to wait for
someone to back out of your parking space to get into their space.
There was an orchestra, there was a choir. It was pretty magnificent. And I would only visit there
as a college student. I never lived down there. But
I was always blown away at the sheer size and the volume of
the people and the worship and the noise that was being made
for God. And that’s, I think, the picture you get here. And
they’re going to dedicate the temple. They’re going to dedicate
the altars and the utensils and the vessels and the priest and
the garments. And in fact, in verse 27, you
read of what they did. They dedicated the wall. They sought the Levites and all
their places to bring them. This was from the surrounding
cities. They brought them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication
with gladness, with thanksgiving, and with singing, and with cymbals,
and with harps, and with lyres. And so there’s this dedication.
There’s also a second thing that’s important for us to notice. Perhaps
it’s the most important. It’s the purification. The purification
of the Levites, it says they purified themselves in verse
30. They purified the people, they purified the gates and they
purified the wall. This was again, a city wide event. You know, we think of church
and worship in our little sanctuary. This was the whole city of Jerusalem
walking around it, singing around it and now purifying it. Why did it need purifying? Well,
because the people and the place were defiled. These people had
sinned against God. Their best efforts were, as the
scripture says, filthy rags. And so we remember a passage
of scripture like Psalm 15, who can ascend God’s holy hill, who
can enter his presence. No one but he who has clean hands
and a pure heart. And then the Psalm explains who
can enter God’s presence. So everyone and everything needed
cleansing. Everyone needed cleansing because
of their rotten hearts. Everything needed cleansing.
You think about the utensils and the vessels, where had they
been? They had been carried off by those Babylonians. They had
been touched by unholy people. They had been put away in storage
in Babylon and in Persia. They had been carried off into
exile just as the people had. And in addition, the city had
had pagans squatting in it during the time they were away. And
so it needed purification. Everyone and everything needed
cleansing. the thoughts, words, and deeds
of all the people were impure. This was Yahweh’s holy city. This was his holy precinct. This
was the place where he would be worshiped, especially in his
house. We think of Hebrews chapter nine
in verse 14, where it says, if the sprinkling of the blood of
heifers and goats purified the people, how much more Will the
sprinkling of the blood of the Lord Jesus purify us? And that’s the picture we need
to take away here. We need purifying. And only the
blood of Jesus will cleanse us from our sins. Well, the third
thing we see is Thanksgiving. There’s a dedication of the city
and the temple and the wall and everything else. There’s the
purification of it, but there’s Thanksgiving. Can you imagine
this mass processional? Can you imagine the volume of
noise, the loudness of the instruments, the singing and the antiphonal
responses around the city? In fact, if you read, Verse 43,
it says, they offered great sacrifices that day and they rejoiced for
God had made them rejoice with great joy. It says the women
and the children also rejoiced and the joy of Jerusalem was
heard far away. Can you imagine old Sanballat
and Tobiah and some of them, oh, you’re gonna build that wall,
not even a fox. could walk on it without it falling
over. And here’s all the priests. Here’s
all the Levites. Here’s all the people. They’re walking around
the city. They’re praising God. They’re making lots of noise.
The place is on fire. It’s shaking, right? It’s a noisy
place. And they make the circuit, the
Levites, the singers, the leaders, the priest, Ezra, Nehemiah, they
gave thanks and they sang and they played their instruments
and they made a circuit of the city. How amazing. A couple of times this year I’ve
been to a sold out crowd football game, 40,000 people. I know that’s
chump change when you think of Michigan and the big house and
maybe Tennessee and Neyland Stadium or some of these other places.
But to be in a stadium with 40,000 people, all doing the wave, all
doing the clapping and the cheering and the chants, it’s pretty neat.
And a couple times a year, we’ll go to the great Taj Mahal of
basketball, Cameron Indoor Stadium, really small place. packs nine
or 10,000 people in there, and the place vibrates, and the place
shakes. And that’s really what we ought
to experience in the house of God. We ought to be saved people
who sing. We ought to be thankful people
who give thanks. We ought to blow the roof off
of the place. We ought to outplay the piano,
because God has made us glad. And in some sense, Our praises
ought to be heard in the neighborhood, both as a witness to Jesus, but
perhaps as a bit of condemnation to those who don’t worship God.
My sister lives down in Wilmington and she lives near this gymnasium
that this church has been renting for some time to start one of
their moose and movie theater and metrics churches. And she
says they have this big loud speaker system, and she said
it rattles her dishes in her China cabinet, and she lives
a quarter mile away. Now, that’s not the type of praise
we want to probably put in the neighborhood. We’d probably get
a noise ordinance, phone call or visit from the police. But
we ought to be so thankful that we have returned from exile.
We ought to be so thankful that we have prospered under the providence
and the provision of almighty God and that his holy and wise
and powerful goodness to us has made us glad. And perhaps we
don’t think about that. Perhaps we come to church and
we’re like Eeyore and it’s time to stand again. It’s time to
sing again. Maybe we should take stock of
all that God has done for us in Christ. Maybe we should consider
all that he has done for us so that we might worship him with
reverence and awe and perhaps a bit of volume and noise. Well, we’ve thought about the
dedication of the city, the purification of the people and the things.
We’ve looked at their thanksgiving through the processional for
all that God has done. They took the time to stop and
acknowledge all that God had done. Now we wanna think of the
long-term performance. Remember they promised when they
made covenant with God, we’re going to keep the temple going.
We’re going to keep the Levites fed. We’re going to keep the
wood chopped. We’re going to keep raising sheep and lamb and
oxen and all the things needed for sacrifices. And so they promised
now it’s time to keep the thing up and running. And so at the
tail end of our passage, you see that they are keeping it
up. They’re giving the endowment. The portions are provided for
everyone so that the services can be performed in the temple,
in the house of God. And don’t you think they have
thoughts in their minds and their hearts back to when little old
Abraham first came into the territory and he built his little altar
and just he himself worshiped God. And now God has prospered
them all those centuries. And when there was doom and gloom
and exile, he’s brought them back. And so from Abraham and
his altar and his tents to the tabernacle, to the city of David
and to Solomon’s temple and to the rubble, now God has brought
them back that they might worship him. But we’ve got to remember
this points to something greater. And that’s the end of the scriptures
when we read that God gathers his saints into his heavenly
city and he gathers them into his presence, into his temple
so that we might worship him forever and ever. The point is
not the bricks and the mortar. The point is the presence of
God that can only come through sacrifice and that can only come
through his love for us in Jesus. Let’s do pray together. Lord,
we remember The question of the psalmist who can sojourn in your
tent, who can dwell in your holy habitation, who can ascend your
mountain, who can stand before you. And it’s only he who has
clean hands and a pure heart. The one who does not lift up
his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. Lord,
that’s only Jesus. And we thank you that we have
been found hidden in Christ. His shed blood has been sprinkled
on us and made us clean that we might enter your holy of holies.
And we give you thanks for that. And we want to worship you and
adore you for that.